... and then I puked.

My mileage has been increasing over the past few months and Hoosier Jill encouraged me to sign up for a 10K. So, Discover Roanoke 10K, here we come!

It started off well enough... beautiful morning although a little windy, sun shining, my body felt good, my mind was ready. Then I saw the hill we immediately had to run up. Hills?! In Indiana?! Apparently Roanoke, IN is hilly. Who knew. Then we ran down the hill and oh.. another hill. Up the hill, down the hill, flat, up the hill, down the hill, flat... this was the whole race.

We saw some interesting characters along the way including the lady with a floppy sun hat, jean shorts and pantyhose. Then Jill starting pointing out the people we were going to pick off along the way. Oh yeah, I'm going to blow past them eventually.... I thought.

Some more up the hill, down the hill, flat, up the hill, down the hill, flat. Then we came to around 4 miles. I have this nagging toe pain that I get in long distances. At first it feels like it's going numb and then it's like 100 needles are stabbing into it all at once. Then the stitch in my side started to turn to nausea around mile 5. At that point, I knew it was going to be an ugly finish.

Jill was uber supportive, helping me along every step of the way... but I quickly realized I wasn't going to be picking anyone off and they might be picking up my dead body here at any minute. Finally.. there's the finish line. About 50 yards away come the dry heaves. Jill.. "come on, you can't stop now! Go GO GOOOOOO!!" She practically pushed me across that finish line where someone immediately tried to clip the chip off my shoe. I knew I was going to lose it on their head at any second so I excused myself, walked behind a bush..... and then I puked.

Thankfully it wasn't some dramatic, SNL skit puke. More like a one heave and done. Now I'm that girl at the end of the race who puked that all the other racers are telling their friends about. You'd think I'd be mortified but you know what? I'm not. I left all I had out on those streets of Roanoke (and behind the bush) and I was damn proud of myself. Luckily Jill found me some water and I instantly felt better and even got a pic (I'm in the middle) with Jill and her friend who ran the 5K, Kim.

It was around this time that I realized I forgot to stop my Garmin, damn it! Oh well. I'm not sure of my official time yet. Jill said it's 1:08:something. Here are my splits:

1 10:42.8 1.00 10:43

2 10:50.1 1.00 10:50

3 10:48.5 1.00 10:49

4 10:42.8 1.00 10:43

5 11:43.7 1.00 11:44

6 11:37.1 1.00 11:37

7 7:48.2 0.28 27:41 (this is not accurate)

So, to sum up. That was awesome at times, terrible at times, and I can't wait to do it again!

Hope you all had great races/runs today. Good luck to all you Boston runners!

First off, congratulations! Way to go! A 10k is a big jump in racing distance!

Originally Posted by iKarlye:

...Then we came to around 4 miles. I have this nagging toe pain that I get in long distances. At first it feels like it's going numb and then it's like 100 needles are stabbing into it all at once.

I just wanted to share, though, that I have experienced exactly this difficulty myself - for me it came on around 2.5m into the run and a quick 30 second walk would alleviate things sufficiently for a short time at least. Since then, though, I have informally determined (trial and error) that it basically has to do with the weakness and tenseness of my calves. The problem always comes on with new shoes, for me, after a short time they seem to settle in to an acceptable level of comfort, though. I've taken to using some inserts that increase the heal-to-toe drop from the typical 8mm to something a little greater. If you try inserts, give them 10+ days for them and the shoes to wear in appropriately. I'd highly recommend them, though - there's no way I could do the distance that I do right now if that pain were still present - and GL!

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